"How like her grandmother's it is," thought Genji. "Were she to take lessons from a good professor she might become a master of the art."
He ordered for her a beautiful doll's house, and played with her different innocent and amusing games.
In the meantime, the Prince, her father, had duly arrived at the old home of Violet and asked for her. The servants were embarrassed, but as they had been requested by Genji not to tell, and as Shiônagon had also enjoined them to keep silence, they simply told him that the nurse had taken her and absconded. The Prince was greatly amazed, but he remembered that the girl's grandmother never consented to send his daughter to his house, and knowing Shiônagon to be a shrewd and intelligent woman, he concluded that she had found out the reasons which influenced her, and that so out of respect to her, and out of dislike to tell him the reason of it, she had carried the girl off in order that she might be kept away from him. He therefore merely told the servants to inform him at once if they heard anything about them, and he returned home.
Our story again brings us back to Nijiô. The girl gradually became reconciled to her new home, as she was most kindly treated by Genji. True, during those evenings when Genji was absent she thought of her dead grandmother, but the image of her father never presented itself to her, as she had seldom seen him. And now, naturally enough, Genji, whom she had learned to look upon as a second father, was the only one for whom she cared. She was the first to greet him when he came home, and she came forward to be fondled and caressed by him without shame or diffidence. Girls at her age are usually shy and under restraint, but with her it was quite different. And again, if a girl has somewhat of jealousy in her disposition, and looks upon every little trifle in a serious light, a man will have to be cautious in his dealings with her, and she herself, too, will often have to undergo vexation. Thus many disagreeable and unexpected incidents might often result. In the case of Violet, however, things were very different, and she was ever amiable and invariably pleasant.
FOOTNOTES:
[61] An Indian theological writing.
[62] In the Buddhist Bible it is stated that there is in Paradise a divine tree, called Udon, which rarely blossoms. When, however, it does blossom, Buddha is said to appear in the world, therefore we make use of this expression when referring to any rare event.
[63] The name of a song which in those days formed the first lesson in writing.
[64] The authoress represents her in a subsequent chapter as suffering punishment in the next world for this sin. The real cause of Genji's exile is also supposed to have resulted from the same sin.